Intrafunctional Competitive Intelligence and Sales Performance: A Social Network Perspective

Abstract

Salespeople represent a primary source of competitive intelligence (CI), but the contextual factors that influence the performance impact of salesperson CI quality remain underresearched. The authors develop a framework to examine the performance impact of CI quality at the individual salesperson and sales district levels, with sales district CI quality diversity and sales managers' network centrality as contingencies thereof. The empirical results from multilevel data sets of two U.S.-based corporations reveal that district CI quality diversity weakens the positive performance effect of CI quality at both levels. Sales managers' centrality in within-district and peer advice networks buffers the performance losses created by district CI quality diversity, but salespeople's centrality does not have this buffering effect. The study uncovers conditions under which the positive performance impact of salesperson and district CI quality can disappear and even become negative, thus highlighting the role of managers as CI hubs.